Industry committee  If I may add to what Lyette said, our members at CPCC—again, we're an umbrella collective—are very clear that their preference is to license use as much as possible. Typically, if you are consuming music through a legal service, you are also acquiring the right to make various copies of those works.

Industry committee  Again, depending on what evidence and what technology there is, that would certainly affect our ask and affect the evidence brought by other groups as well to the public proceedings in front of the Copyright Board to be weighed.

Industry committee  I'm sorry. I want to make sure that I understand your question. Are you asking whether there's a way to compensate for private copying that looks more like the compensation for a streaming service?

Industry committee  Right. I guess the defining feature of the private copying regime is that copying is inherently private. We can never know. We can't control it. We can't directly license these copies. That's really the problem that is solved by the levy regime. Again, we're trying to come as close as we can to having the users pay, but this is precisely the category of copying that we can't know about that is private.

Industry committee  The other aspect of this is that the regime is fairly self-correcting. We apply for tariffs on a year-by-year basis.

Industry committee  Certainly. Every medium, every device, that has been levied around the world, is used by some people and not by others. It's used for music copying. It's used for other purposes. As I say, if we agree with the principle that there should be some form of payment, we simply need to come up with the best possible way of making that happen, so that, first of all, we come as close as we can to having the users, who are making the copies and benefiting from that right, being the ones paying the rights holders; hence, our preference for a levy system, as opposed to a government fund, for example.

Industry committee  I'm sorry. I've lost my train of thought.

Industry committee  I'd add as well that one of the categories of users of blank CDs who don't copy music has been businesses. There are churches and numerous groups that have been able to work with CPCC through a zero-rating program. If there are categories of users who categorically don't use the device for copying, there are systems in Canada, as in other countries where there are levies, where we can work with those groups to exempt them from the levy.

Industry committee  Just to take those two questions that I think I hear you asking, the $40 million is our approximation based on sales volumes. Our revenue depends on what the levy rate is set to by the Copyright Board—

Industry committee  —and the sales of media or devices. Looking backwards at sales of smart phones and tablets, which are now used for copying music quite extensively, we just did the simple math. But certainly, as we said, the rate itself would be established by the Copyright Board with regard to evidence on the extent of the use of those media and devices for copying music.

Industry committee  Right.

Industry committee  If I may say—

Industry committee  —we need to be clear that what we're talking about here is the use of intellectual property. We have to decide as a country if we want to remunerate the rights holders for the use of their work. If we do, there are lots of ways we can do it. The private copying regime is essentially the best system that anyone in the world has come up with to best approximate the value of that use of the right is.

Industry committee  For instance, I pay Bell for my Internet services at home. I also pay Bell for my mobile network services. I also pay Bell for my television services. Those are three different services, three different uses of Bell's service offerings that I consume, and I pay separately three times.

Industry committee  I can tell you the current approach. There are two stages at which that happens. The first is established by the Copyright Board. According to the Copyright Act, the board is charged with allocating the proportion of the levies collected that should go to each class of rights holders—how much to the performers, how much to the makers, and how much to the authors and publishers.